The idea that "abortion is an act of
despair" is one of the key points I have always tried to stress in my
writing and speaking engagements. Despair is not only the driving force
behind most abortion choices, it is also the greatest obstacle to
post-abortion recovery. Until more pro-lifers understand this, they will be
handicapped in their efforts to help women in crisis.

In describing the despair which leads women
to abort, Frederica Mathewes-Green of Feminists for Life of America, gives
us this compelling word-picture: "No woman wants an abortion as she
wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal
caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg."

This quote is so powerfully accurate that it
has even been reprinted by Planned Parenthood. Why? Because pro-abortionists
have long wanted to diffuse the notion that women abort for selfish or
casual reasons. They want the public to sympathize with the desperation of
women seeking abortions because they want to convert sympathy for women into
support for abortion.

Actually, the fact that most women agonize
over the decision to abort is one of the few areas for finding "common
ground" in the abortion debate. Most, if not all, counselors and
researchers on both sides of the political issue would agree that most
abortion decisions involve elements of fear and despair.

But simply because women agonize over their
abortion decisions does not make the decision morally acceptable, not even
to the women themselves. In fact, post-abortion research suggests that the
more a woman agonizes over making an abortion decision, the more she is
likely to agonize over the abortion afterwards. Maternal desires, moral
doubts, and feelings of being exploited do not disappear after an abortion.
They continue. They grow. They become sources of constant reflection, or
stifling avoidance. They can even become the source of crippling
self-condemnation.

Escape Through Self-Destruction

Returning to Mathewes-Green's analogy of an
animal gnawing its leg off to escape a trap, we see that abortion is
actually an act of self-destruction. When pro-abortionists view a woman in
this desperate situation, their solution is to offer the woman a clean,
legal way of cutting off the offending leg -- after all, they believe there
are too many unfit "legs" in the world already.

But what abortion counselors fail to tell
women who are choosing abortion is that the loss of their "leg"
will leave them crippled. Just as many amputees, they will experience the
feeling of a "phantom leg." This missing part will leave them less
whole and less capable. And at times this missing piece will cause an
indescribable ache and a flood of uncontrollable tears. In escaping the
trap, they will have lost a part of themselves.

Contrast this approach to that of crisis
pregnancy centers where pro-lifers are committed to finding a way to open
the jaws of the trap to save both the woman and her "leg."
Pro-lifers insist that there is always room for hope. There is always a way
to avoid a destructive amputation -- a way which in the long run will be
appreciated by both her and her "leg."

What we see in these two perspectives is the
difference between despair and hope. Despair inevitably leads us to accept
abortion. Hope always leads us to embrace life.

Hope is a virtue. It is centered on God, the
source of all hope. Despair is a sin against hope. It is one of Satan's
greatest weapons.

The Weapon Of Despair

By fanning the flames of despair, Satan can
lead us into the greatest of sins, because desperate people do desperate
things. At the moment a person gives in to despair, one has suffered a loss
of faith and trust in God. In the case of abortion, the desperate woman has
lost faith in the promise that God has a plan for her life, much less a plan
for her child's life.

Desperate people try to take control. They
try to save whatever they can by doing whatever needs to be done -- which
may include betraying their own values. For example, when the Nazis
undertook the extermination of millions of Jews, the sheer magnitude of
their task required them to develop ways of soliciting the cooperation of
the victims. There were too few soldiers to contain millions of rebellious
Jews. So it was necessary to manipulate their victims so that they would
choose to cooperate for at least one day at a time. The Nazis did this by
exposing the Jews to limited threats; the victims were always left
with the bit of hope that by submitting to the present indignity, there was
something else which could be saved. According to sociologist Zygmunt
Bauman:

At all stages of the Holocaust, the victims
were confronted with a choice (as least subjectively - even when
objectively the choice did not exist any more, having been preempted by the
secret decision of physical destruction). They could not choose between good
and bad situations, but they could at least choose between greater and
lesser evil... In other words they had something to save. To make
their victims' behavior predictable and hence manipulable and controllable,
the Nazis had to induce them to act in the 'rational mode.' To achieve that
effect, they had to make the victims believe that there was indeed something
to save, and that there were clear rules as to how one should go about
saving it.1

These choices were presented in a way that
discouraged reflecting on the decisions from a moral perspective.
Instead, the victims were pressured to make rational decisions based
on the rational need to "save whatever we can."

Using this demonic strategy, the Nazis
encouraged the empowerment of ghetto Jewish leaders who would see to the
needs of the people, coordinate distribution of medicine and materials,
maintain morale, etc. These same leaders were then manipulated into
cooperating with the Nazi extermination program. They were confronted with
the agonizing choice of cooperating with the Nazis or witnessing the
slaughter of their people. At first the cooperation was in "small"
things, maintaining a ghetto police force, providing lists of names,
selection of ghetto residents to be sent to "resettlement"
projects, providing transportation to pick-up points, and the like. In some
cases, when the Nazis wanted to punish the entire community for some
infraction, Jewish leaders were even forced to select and arrest the desired
number of victims who were to be publicly executed by the Nazis. And
always--no matter what the request--the leaders were told that by
cooperating they were saving the lives of the majority who remained. Leaders
who didn't cooperate were eliminated. Leaders who did cooperate saved their
own lives, the lives of their families, and the lives of the dwindling
majority of Jews under their leadership--at least for a time--and were left
to agonize over their complicity.

The similarity between Nazi manipulations of
the Jews and the abortionists' manipulation of women faced with crisis
pregnancies is striking. Just as the victim-Jews were forced to choose
between losing everything, or just a little, so abortion counselors
encourage the victim-woman to view "this pregnancy" as a threat to
everything she has, her relationships, her family, her career, her entire
future. She is assured that by sacrificing this one thing (a tiny unborn
child), she can save the rest. During this process, the victim-woman is
urged to view the abortion decision not as a moral choice, but as a rational
choice of "saving what you can."

But in fact, just as those who reluctantly
cooperated with the Nazis discovered, the bargain is a false one. The
demands on ghetto leaders to sacrifice more and more victims never stopped.
And so it is with the post-aborted woman. After her child is destroyed, she
faces self-condemnation, lower self-esteem, difficulty with relationships,
substance abuse, career problems, a cycle of repeat abortions, and more.
Often she experiences an intense desire for replacement pregnancies to atone
for her lost child, and she becomes a single parent, the very problem she
sought to avoid in the first place - but now she also has to deal with the
emotional scars of an abortion.

The Devil versus Christ

It is significant how differently Christ and
the Devil appear before and after any sin, in this case, abortion. Before
the abortion, Christ stands, with his arms outstretched to block the way,
saying, "Do not do this thing. The sacrifice you make now will be
rewarded a hundredfold. I offer you life, so that you may live life
abundantly. Place your hope in me and I will not abandon you."

The Devil, on the other hand, insists,
"You must get rid of it. Look at all you will lose... You have no
choice. You have already gotten yourself into this problem. Now you must get
yourself out. Do this one thing and then you will be back in the driver's
seat of life. Things will be the way they used to be."

Christ asks us to trust in a plan which we do
yet fully understand; Satan urges us to act now to save what we
already have. Christ asks us to make a moral decision rooted in hope; Satan
asks us to make a "rational" decision based on present needs,
desires, and fears.

But after the abortion, how do they appear?
Afterwards, Christ continues to offer hope: "Come to me. I want to
share your tears. I want to comfort you. Know that all is forgiven. See,
your child is in my arms waiting for you to join us when your day is
completed."

Satan on the other hand continues to fan the
flames of despair. He who pretended to be on her side now stands as her
fiercest accuser. "Look at what you have done! You have murdered your
own child! Can there be anything worse than that? There's no hope for you
now. You are nothing. You're beyond redemption! You may as well seek what
little comfort you can in the embrace of an affair, in the bottom of a booze
bottle, or in the silence of suicide. And if you get pregnant again, you've
already had an abortion once, so you might as well do it again--it may even
help you to get tougher and more immune to this pain. It makes no difference
now. You've proven you can murder. Nothing can be worse. And, oh, how you
must hate those people who led you to this. Your boyfriend, your parents,
your doctor. There is no one you can trust. There is no one who can love YOU
-- a murderer. You are alone. Your best hope is to bury your past.
Hide it from others. Hide it from yourself. But remember it will always be
yours alone to bear."

Before the abortion, Christ condemns it and
Satan makes excuses for it. After the abortion, Satan is the one condemning
it while Christ wants to forgive it.2

This is the Devil's bargain. He encourages
women to submit to abortion in order to avoid losing what they already have.
But once they have chosen it, he tries to keep them trapped in despair so as
to strip away everything else. Indeed, Satan pumps as much despair into her
life as he can generate. And not into her life alone, but into the lives of
the child's father, grandparents, siblings, and everyone else he can touch
with the poison of abortion. His purpose is threefold: to generate misery,
to encourage more sin, and to create doubt in the unfathomable mercy of God.

Despair and Forgiveness

For many post-aborted women, the forgiveness
of God is a precept which they can mouth, but it is difficult for them to
digest. How can they be forgiven? The horror of their sin is so
great. Many know that they must believe in God's forgiveness, and they do so
in an act of faith. But how can they feel forgiven, when every
instinct in their nature says they cannot be forgiven, even should not be
forgiven?

This is the question I will try to address
with a few thoughts in part two of this series.

2. This general description of the stance of
Christ and Satan before and after sin is drawn from the audio-tape "The
Devil" by Archbishop Fulton Sheen and is applied here specifically to
the case of abortion.